The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership: A Roadmap
to Energy Security
by Samuel Wright Bodman
U.S. Secretary of Energy
There are three programs intended to enhance our level of energy security
and diversity in the United States by promoting safe, emissions-free nuclear
power: Generation IV, Nuclear Power 2010 and last year's Energy Policy Act
provisions for federal risk insurance.
With these progressions, we are taking our next, and perhaps our boldest,
steps.
A short time ago, our administration announced the Global Nuclear Energy
Partnership, or GNEP, as part of President Bush's Advanced Energy Initiative.
This initiative arises directly from the president's belief that science
and technology will lead us to cleaner and better sources of energy. Innovation
will propel us toward new ways to heat our homes, power our cars, run our
businesses, preserve our environment and, therefore, ensure a safer, more
secure future.
Combined with the president's other major announcement, the American Competitiveness
Initiative, this effort recognizes that to maintain our country's economic
preeminence in an increasingly competitive world, we simply must maintain
our scientific and technological superiority. And doing so requires a substantial
and sustained investment. In fact, the president has committed to doubling
the amount of federal spending on physical science research over the next
10 years.
This kind of investment in science and technology will be critical to the
success of GNEP, a groundbreaking international effort to expand emissions-free
nuclear energy with new technologies that effectively, and safely, recycle
spent nuclear fuel without producing separated plutonium. There are several
major advantages to such a process.
First, the energy benefits are enormous. Nuclear power already produces vast
quantities of electricity relative to the amount of fuel required. But the
potential energy we could produce from new, so-called fast reactors using
recycled fuel is even greater.
Right now, the nuclear material we dispose of from once-through reactors
retains up to 90 percent of its energy. This is an enormous amount of nuclear
waste. I don't see why – if there is a better way – we should go through
so much effort to bury so much valuable nuclear fuel under a mountain.
Processing spent uranium fuel for use in advanced reactors would allow us
to extract much more energy from the same amount of nuclear material. At
the same time, we would also vastly reduce both the volume and the radiotoxicity
of the waste that ultimately requires disposal. This means that rather than
requiring another five, six or ten Yucca Mountains over the coming decades
just to meet our nuclear disposal needs, we will need just one site.
At the same time, because the process will consume – rather than separate
– plutonium, proliferation risks will be significantly reduced. Currently,
200 metric tons of separated plutonium is stored at various sites around
the world. These excesses are produced by other nations' civilian nuclear
power plants. Putting this material back into reactors as fuel would greatly
reduce the risk that it might be stolen or seized for destructive purposes.
Finally, the partnership arrangement between fuel-cycle and reactor-only
states envisioned by GNEP will help supply the world with clean electrical
power. The agreement will offer non-fuel-cycle nations commercially competitive
and reliable access to nuclear fuel in exchange for their commitment to forgo
the development of enrichment and recycling technologies.
If we are successful in fully implementing GNEP, we will be able to increase
energy security both here in the United States and abroad, encourage clean
economic development around the world and improve the overall health of the
environment.
These are ambitious and far-reaching goals. Indeed, I realize some people
may think we are being too ambitious.
We have not built a new nuclear power plant in this country in 30 years.
Getting the first new plants sited, licensed and built, while also resolving
the challenges of building a permanent waste depository, should be more than
enough to keep us busy for the foreseeable future. Under the new Energy Policy
Act, we have opportunities for nuclear power that we haven't had for a long
time. According to critics, we should capitalize on these advantages without
getting involved in something bigger.
I can understand this thinking. But in the final analysis, I cannot agree
with it. GNEP will not interfere with our more immediate plans to see several
new nuclear power plants built in the United States.
Getting the first new reactors underway is important – even vital. Our administration
is dedicated to following through on our Nuclear Power 2010 plans. We are
also dedicated to overcoming the challenges regarding Yucca Mountain.
Having said that, I think that if one looks at the long-term trends unfolding
in the United States and the world, it will become clear these more immediate
plans are necessary. However, they are not sufficient to meet the greater
challenges we will face in the next 10, 20 or 50 years.
The first question we face, as other nations are moving ahead with nuclear
power, is whether we want to stay at the leading edge of this development.
We can help guide it, or we can stand by.
Right now, 130 new reactors are under construction or consideration around
the world. The explanation for this is simple. The world needs more energy
and less carbon.
Indeed, people everywhere are coming to see nuclear energy not only as an
acceptable or a responsible choice, but as a desirable one.
Important Questions
Will the accelerated pursuit of nuclear power emphasize commerce and cooperation,
or will it involve a chaotic scramble to make use of the world's most dangerous
materials? Will the global development of nuclear energy follow a path
that is safe? Will it recognize both the promise and the danger of splitting
the atom? In other words, will this interest in nuclear technology, which
is demonstrated by states like North Korea and Iran, take place with or
without the substantial benefits and security that GNEP offers?
To clarify what I mean by that, and to explain why GNEP is not merely advantageous
but necessary, I invite you consider some of the major events unfolding in
the world and some of the challenges we face as a nation.
First and foremost, we must always be concerned about the safety of our nation
and its people. To ensure this, we need the strongest possible safeguards
to prevent the proliferation of nuclear technologies, materials and expertise.
Keeping nuclear and radiological weapons out of the hands of terrorists is
one of our most urgent priorities – not just for the United States, but for
the civilized world at large.
Another national security consideration is the dependence industrialized
nations of the world have on oil. As the president noted in his State of
the Union address, it is a commodity that is currently essential to our economies,
but so often imported from unstable parts of the world. One concern is the
wealth and influence that oil provides to regimes that may not always have
the best interests of the world's democracies at heart.
A third global challenge involves the issue of national security more broadly.
Even if we were able to quickly and resoundingly defeat the terrorist threat
we currently face, we would still be confronted with the desperate, grinding
poverty that grips so much of the world.
What developed nations should, or indeed can, do about this poverty raises
complex political and moral questions. But it also raises national security
considerations, in the sense that the most underdeveloped and "failed" states
have frequently served as safe havens for terrorists and other fanatics.
Think of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan or Osama bin Laden's forays into
chaotic Sudan.
But if these underdeveloped nations are ever to build thriving economies
and achieve lasting prosperity, they will need, perhaps above all else, access
to affordable and reliable energy supplies, particularly electricity.
Finally, there is the global challenge that confronts us regarding the environment.
Even if we were to suddenly discover massive new reserves of oil within the
territory of the United States that would allow us to eliminate all of our
oil imports, we would still have to deal with the pollution and greenhouse
gases emitted by burning fossil fuel. Not to mention the pollution caused
by other nations would still be a looming problem.
To summarize, these are some of the most critical challenges we face: the
proliferation of nuclear materials, the political concerns over oil dependency,
the need to reduce poverty through economic growth, and curbing or even eliminating
the pollution and greenhouse gases emitted by using fossil fuels.
The message I want to drive home today is that GNEP represents a multilayered
and sophisticated plan to address, at least in part, all of these challenges.
Appropriate Response
These problems are not going away. The choice that confronts us today is
not whether to respond to these challenges, but how we will react and adapt
to our changing world.
We could respond to these problems in a haphazard, piecemeal and inconsistent
way. We could focus on one or two of them and let the others fester, putting
them off until a time when they have grown more difficult and less manageable.
Or we can find a better way.
For instance, we can leave open the loophole in our current nonproliferation
framework that allows states to pursue nuclear weapons work under the pretense
of developing a fuel cycle for peaceful energy purposes. Or we can use GNEP
to close that loophole.
We can continue to rely on unstable, sometimes unfriendly, nations to fuel
the world's transportation sector. Or we can develop new technologies and
set the stage for massive new sources of electricity to power our cars and
trucks, and work toward ending our dependence on oil.
We can abandon the world's underdeveloped nations to poverty and squalor
and stand by while they struggle to meet their growing energy needs with
fossil fuels. Or we can work in cooperation with other nuclear fuel-cycle
states to provide these nations with commercially attractive, safe and proliferation-resistant
sources of nuclear energy.
Finally, we can choose to continue pouring carbon and other greenhouse gases
into the atmosphere, or we can join the growing global consensus that acknowledges
nuclear power's enormous environmental advantages. Electricity use in the
developing world is predicted to increase 125 percent by 2025. Generating
this power entirely with coal would mean 5 billion tons of additional CO2
emissions each year. Supplying the same amount of electricity with nuclear
reactors would, of course, generate no emissions.
I do not mean to suggest GNEP is a magic bullet that will wipe out all of
our problems. In fact, implementing GNEP will require overcoming some serious
obstacles.
Still, we must overcome these hurdles. GNEP represents the next, necessary
step in the nuclear era, which is a time in which the truly awesome potential
of nuclear power could finally be able to flourish.
One reason I am excited and optimistic about GNEP is the fact the most substantial
obstacles we face are technological. I am almost tempted to say "merely
technological." As we look around us, we see there are many things in
the world we would like to accomplish that appear beyond our control. Humankind,
unfortunately, has always been plagued by folly, cruelty and corruption.
But applying innovation and ingenuity to difficult technical challenges is
something we can do. In fact, it is something at which Americans have always
excelled. Our history, and our great economic success, is in many ways the
story of American commitment to innovation and our capacity for technological
progress.
Side by side with this legendary ingenuity and independence, we have also
shown an unparalleled capacity to marshal our resources in the service of
great national purposes. In the last century, we fought two world wars, survived
the Great Depression, put a man on the moon, and brought the Cold War to
a peaceful conclusion. We did so by standing shoulder to shoulder and working
hard together to do what none of us could have done individually.
I believe we can once again confront and overcome our most urgent challenges.
This time, we can do so on a global scale. We can overcome problems that
are global in scope and require nothing less than concerted, international
action.
The members of GNEP envision a world in which all responsible nations work
together to share the benefits of peaceful nuclear power. If we succeed in
these measures, we will be able to do so much: provide vast quantities of
affordable electricity, increase energy diversity, promote economic development,
reduce pollution and carbon emissions, curtail nuclear waste and significantly
reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism.
These are enormous goals that will require an enormous effort, dedication
and perseverance. Those sterling qualities will be without effective purpose
unless they are given direction and guidance. We need a roadmap with a deliberative,
cooperative and considered plan to direct our exertions and achieve the goals
I have described. I believe GNEP is that roadmap.
Samuel Wright Bodman was sworn in as the 11th secretary of energy on February
1, 2005, after the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed him on January 31, 2005.
He leads the Department of Energy with a budget in excess of $23 billion
and more than 100,000 federal and contractor employees.
Previously, Secretary Bodman served as deputy secretary of the Treasury
beginning in February 2004. He also served the George W. Bush administration
as deputy secretary of the Department of Commerce beginning in 2001. A financier
and executive by trade, with three decades of experience in the private sector,
Secretary Bodman was well suited to manage the day-to-day operations of both
of these cabinet agencies.
Born in 1938 in Chicago, he graduated in 1961 with a B.S. in chemical engineering
from Cornell University. In 1965 he completed his Sc.D. at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT). For the next six years he served as an associate
professor of chemical engineering at MIT and began his work in the financial
sector as technical director of the American Research and Development Corporation,
a pioneer venture capital firm. He and his colleagues provided financial
and managerial support to scores of new business enterprises throughout the
United States.
From there, Secretary Bodman went to Fidelity Venture Associates, a division
of Fidelity Investments. In 1983 he was named president and chief operating
officer of Fidelity Investments and a director of the Fidelity Group of Mutual
Funds. In 1987 he joined Cabot Corporation, a Boston-based Fortune 300 company
with global business activities in specialty chemicals and materials, where
he served as chairman, CEO and a director. Over the years, he has been a
director of many other publicly owned corporations.
Secretary Bodman has also been active in public service. He is a former
director of MIT's School of Engineering Practice and a former member of the
MIT Commission on Education. He also served as a member of the Executive
and Investment Committees at MIT, a member of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences and a trustee of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the
New England Aquarium.
Secretary Bodman is married to M. Diane Bodman. He has three children, two
stepchildren and eight grandchildren.
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